This was another very, very slow week unless you want to discuss the possible electoral implications of a gubernatorial race in Virginia.
I don't, but I do feel compelled to share why I did not write a reaction to the election or why I do not outwardly react to many things at this point.
I didn't react because there's too much reaction already and most of the reactions make me feel worse than the actual results of the election. It's bad news for Virginia, of course, and voters will probably regret their decision by this time next year, but this was a local election centered around the Republican culture war in a state that was primed to swing in another direction.
Common liberal opinion expressed in blogs and social media, however, would have you believe that a conservative culture warrior who didn't even try to run on economics won because Democrats in Congress haven't passed paid family leave yet; as if the people who voted for Glenn Youngkin give a shit about that. They voted against Critical Race Theory, not for subsidized child care.
The fact that so many liberals still believe in Economic Anxiety is depressing as hell to me. Republicans haven't presented a coherent economic policy in my adult lifetime and they just spent the last year burning the Critical Race Theory cross while trying to ban transgender women and girls from public life. Bigotry is their platform, not infrastructure spending.
If failure to pass enough spending policies means liberals are too apathetic to vote, then I don't need company like that. They aren't allies. Prioritizing individual pet policies over the basic rights of people to live in public -- people like me -- tells me they don't really care. My rights are taken for granted by people whose own rights not threatened the way mine are. No one campaigns against [mostly cis white liberals] the way Republicans do against black or transgender Americans.
There is no place for me in a discussion among people who think free community college is more important than the right of some people to live at all. Civil rights consistently take a back seat to whatever populist economic policy becomes the current obsession in most liberal circles and I feel completely alienated by that. I'm a broke tranny so it's not as if I don't care about economic policy, but some things are still more important than that.
Black Virginians just saw an election decided on the validity of their own history of oppression and you want them to think about paid family leave?
If you're an average cis white liberal, a Republican taking power means you might turn off the news for a few years and taxes on your rich neighbors go down. If you're a minority, a Republican taking power means your right to exist will be under the gun from day one. The latter should be more important and reason enough to turn out and vote, but the former consistently broadcasts that it isn't.
I prefer to cover actual policy and lawmaking and ignore the soundbites because the soundbites make me want to disconnect my cable and go live on a farm.